Never been kissed
by Bond.Jane
Summary: She understood why kissing was such a part of every true love story: because it was the closest thing to magic … But to be kissed? Well, that was entirely a different matter. Emma's tongue slipped through her lips and lazily glided over hers, studying her texture, tasting her, mixing their saliva as if together they could be something wholly different from the sum of their parts


Never been kissed

Losing the ring Daniel had given her had not meant a goodbye. She would still stare out of her window and talk to him. On days like today, she would still go into the woods and sit on a log to talk to him, far from the maddening crowd.

Losing the ring had made no difference. Daniel was in her life as much now as he had ever been since she had lost him. She refused to let him go and he would sit and talk to her now with the same attention, with the same care and affection as he had before her whole life had crumbled to a ruin.

He was her one true love, the one that death had not conquered but for the impossibility of anything more than this absence. When, with the realm at her feet, she'd had nothing but a whole in her heart, he had been her best friend too. The one thing she held onto from the person she had once been.

He had been with her through the schemes, though the violence and the hate. Through the loss and the failure. He had been with her in those nights Henry had been sick and those when he had started hating her and thoroughly breaking her heart anew. Daniel was the one constant in her life. Daniel and his absence.

She didn't quite know how to face him, now. She didn't quite know how to explain this to him. She didn't quite know how to tell him that for once, for one shiny moment, she had forgotten all about him and there had been something else in her but the loss of him. She was ashamed of herself, because he had died for her, he had died a million times in her memories and she had died the same number with him with every single one of those memories. How could she confess? How could she come to him still with the flavour of a kiss in her mouth, with her lips still warm and her face still flushed from it?

How could she tell him that she would not honour his death for as long as she lived?

She paced. She paced because she felt shame and guilt. She felt absolutely unworthy. She sat again, because he would come. He would come because he deserved for her to apologize and for her to tell him she had failed him and for her to tell him she had betrayed him.

She sat and her fingers touched her lips because she could not help herself.

Daniel bumped her shoulder with his. It wasn't really physical. But it was as good as it got between them. Her own brand of hell to see, to remember, to believe. And never to touch.

"Something troubling you?" _For once_, she hoped fervently, _say my name_. Never once had he said her name since he'd died. _Just once_. Because no one else did. She was always Madam Mayor or Your Majesty. She missed being Regina. Just Regina. She almost sobbed at the question. She should have _traitor_ painted across her forehead. She shook her head, mostly because she had no idea how to confess. Her heart thumped until she was out of breath.

"Yes" He did this thing he always did, a non committal, a non answer with a tilt of his head and a shrug of his shoulder. "Yes." She touched her lips again.

* * *

She knew kissing. She had been kissed before. Daniel had kissed her, soft, almost chaste kisses of the time and place they lived. And she had watched the Discovery Channel. She knew why kissing was such a pleasurable experience. She knew kissing stimulated all the nerve endings on the lips, in the tongue. She knew that it started a chemical reaction in the body. She knew. Intellectually, she knew. She understood why kissing was such a part of every true love story: because it was the closest thing to magic this world or the one she had come from had to offer.

She knew. But to be kissed? Well, that was entirely a different matter. Emma's lips were soft and warm and smooth and rubbed gently over hers, slowly increasing pressure, gently probing and studying. Emma's hand slid from her hip to her ribcage, above her heart, the short span of her hand just enough to hold her heart in place when it bid for freedom. Emma's tongue slipped through her lips and lazily glided over hers, studying her texture, tasting her, mixing their saliva as if together they could be something wholly different from the sum of their parts.

Regina's breath caught, arrested in that place between memory and future – and then released with a sound almost of pain. The world revolved and she lost her balance.

"Sweet" Emma said, the kiss not nearly broken, their lips still touching ever so lightly, the warmth of her breath inside Regina's mouth. It triggered a shiver down a spine she had no memory of feeling. Not with a single one of her many bedfellows. "Very sweet."

Emma gazed leisurely at her lips, the column of her neck, the swell of her breasts as she eased back, studying Regina as if there had not been a year between them filled with traps and accusations and enmity.

"I like it." _Oh_. Genuine amazement. _I like it too_. Which was far more surprising. "I really like it."

Regina wished for Emma to do it again. But when had her wishes ever come true?

"I best do it again" And she did. God, she did. Her lips touched Regina's. The same softness, the same lazy glide of the lips, the same slow exploration of her tongue. But this time, it felt different. It felt familiar and homecoming. It felt like the kiss she wanted to be kissing from that moment onwards. It felt like a want and a need. She tasted a little mint from the tooth paste and a little cinnamon and a little chocolate. And that tongue felt like excitement in her body and she didn't want it to stop, not any time soon, because all that was, all the voices, all the screaming, all the curses inside her head- everything single one of them was silent. She wanted to respond. She wanted to kiss back. She wanted to give as good as she was getting. She lacked the experience. As if she had never been kissed before.

She felt Emma's body aroused against hers. The warmth from her body, the flush of her skin. Her nipples pushing against her own breasts. It was all quite so new a thing. And she had done that. She had caused that reaction. Without threats, without magic, without bargains or titles. Just with her tongue, with her mouth, with her breath. Emma _wanted _her. And it had been so long since anyone had.

"What you do to me, Regina..."

"What?" It was not coy. It was genuine curiosity. Because Emma had a devastating effect on her: there was only Emma's skin and Emma's scent and Emma's hands and everything else, all the crowd around them had vanished into a blur of colour and sound that did not register. Emma's kiss made her knees wobble and her stomach churn and wetness flow from her, generous. Made her want to be touched. She couldn't quite remember ever feeling that. It was terribly frightening.

"You make me week at the knees." And Emma smiled. A genuine smile, a smile with her whole face and her whole body. Her whole self really, and it promised so much. All of it new.

Regina ran. She would have attacked. She was the poster girl for how attack is the best defence, after all, but she ran. She tried to square her shoulders and walk out, chin high. She knew she had failed, so she just kept going and going and going until she reached the town limits and the only thing she saw were the trees and bushes and wet undergrowth. Until the world was familiar again and it did not feel only or taste only or smell only of Emma Swan.

Until she could see the forest for the trees.

Until she could regroup and think that Daniel had died because of her and deserved better than this… this… this whatever it was that was swelling inside her chest and taking over.

When Daniel sat there, she expected the recrimination. Daniel often spoke to her of her misdeeds, her shortcomings. He was her conscience as much as Henry was her heart. She expected him to say it, how she had disappointed him, how she had betrayed him. How he had died for her and did not deserve this.

But he sat there and bumped her shoulder and told her _I'm going to miss you_ and he was leaving her as sure as everybody else. And she couldn't think of one thing to make him stay, because how do you make someone stay who is already gone?

"Please don't leave me"

He was pensive for a second. "I left so long ago, my love."

"I'm sorry. Daniel, I'm sorry. It won't happen again. It won't. Please." There was nothing physical to hold on to. There was no body, just an essence of Daniel that lived on in her. "You are my one true love. Please" And still Emma's taste filled her mouth.

"And you are mine. But don't hold on to what was just because you know it by heart."

"I'm afraid."

"Be brave."

"Please don't go. You are my one true love." There was such compassion in his tone, like he knew something she didn't.

"Whoever told you there is only one true love lied. There isn't just one true love. Sometimes, if you're really lucky, you get a second chance. There is more than one true love. Like your Henry. And your White Knight. You just have to love enough, truly, madly, deeply enough. You just have to be brave enough."

Saying_ goodbye_ tasted like Emma's kiss. Felt like losing a part of herself. It was a lot like being the best Regina she could be.

"I'll miss you too, Daniel"

* * *

There is a difference between running from and running to something. Emma could tell the difference the moment she saw Regina walking back to Granny's. Regina's chin was high, not tucked into her chest: her shoulders pushed back, not slumped. The walk was steady, not wavering. She was walking to something. Someone.

She knew it in her heart Regina was walking to her. And it could have been pride, she was not above it herself, but though she stood from her pity party chair, she did not move outside, because this was something she needed. Regina would have to walk through that door and would have to kiss her again and they would start something knew today. But she wanted not to be the one taking the first step. She wanted Regina to earn it. She wanted to be fought for. She was tired of doing all the fighting.

When Regina pushed through the door, the bell rang and snapped her out of her trance. She had walked this far only on the certainty that this was a beginning- a good one. And here she was, facing Emma and unsure of what to do, what to say, whether or not this was something she deserved. And then she accepted it: the only way of knowing was to risk it. She took one step closer, absolutely within Emma's personal space. She felt herself shrinking, reducing in size, Emma towering over her. _What's the worst that can happen?_

"I'd like to do that again" She managed to utter through the burning knot in her throat, the one stopping her from breathing. "I'd like to kiss you again." The silence in the diner was absolute, as if someone had pressed pause on life. "Please?" The worse that could happen was to be shut down, to be told it had been a mistake.

Emma closed her eyes and thought _what's the worst that can happen?_ And she moved into Regina, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her closer, breathing in Regina's scent of the woods and of the southern wind that was the harbinger of storms. But it was Regina that closed the distance. It was Regina that let her lips wonder over Emma's, it was Regina that run her tongue over Emma's lips because she wanted to remember the taste of her. It was Regina that invited Emma to deepen the kiss, deepen it so that it became mutual, deliberate. Equal. It was Regina that sobbed a little because a kiss had never tasted like a promise until now.

Emma drank in that sob and taught them both that slow would give them time to memorise what happened when their lips and their tongues and their teeth met. It was Emma that taught them that you have to give a little and take a little because Regina was only just learning that controlling is superfluous when you trust.

Regina felt her body responding. Her face flushed, her breasts perked and strained against her clothing and the moist ran abundant at her centre of her. Emma did that to her. With. One. Kiss.

"What you do to me, Emma."

Emma nodded. She knew. Around them, the diner returned to its playback. Conversations restarted, the clinking of the cutlery against the plates and the cook's bell filled the air. Fundamentally, the world continued on its rotation, the tides continued to ebb and flow, the wind persisted on its course. No rivers changed from their beds, no mountains relocated. And yet, all was new.

It was a brand new world.


End file.
